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The Myth of AQI Fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq is the last big argument for keeping U.S. troops in the country. But the military´s estimation of the threat is alarmingly wrong. --By Andrew Tilghman
OK, now that the facts are in that the word “non-combatant” doesn’t mean Jack:
Some of the U.S. forces likely to remain in Iraq after President Barack Obama fulfills his pledge to withdraw combat troops would still have a combat role fighting suspected terrorists, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
Let me spell it out for you Kool-Aid drinking Obamiacs:
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said that a holdover, or "residual," force would number in the tens of thousands.
His spokesman said Wednesday that assuming there is such a force, it would have three primary functions: Training and helping Iraqi forces; protecting Americans and U.S. assets in Iraq and limited counterterrorism operations in which Iraqi forces would take the lead.
On the signature issue that got him the Democratic nomination (even with Hillary’s campaign management schwaffles, she still would have won, otherwise) …
“I think a limited number of those that remain will conduct combat operations against terrorists, assisting Iraqi security forces,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said. “By and large you’re talking about people who we would classify as enablers, support troops.”
He’s a fucking liar.
“We are now carefully reviewing our policies in both wars, and I will soon announce a way forward in Iraq that leaves Iraq to its people and responsibly ends this war,” Obama said in his address to Congress on Tuesday.
Clear?
Non-combatants will conduct combat operations.
Enablers? That’s any Obamiacs who are going to try to claim down is up now that the cat is fully and officially out of the bag.
Tis true that during the general election campaign — though NOT true during Democratic primaries, IIRC — that President Barack Obama always caveated (did I just utter a Haigism?) his Iraq withdrawal timetable by saying it depended on the analysis of the brass hats. (Likewise, Obama uttered his “combat troops only” caveat ONLY after the general election started; he never mentioned that, IIRC, during the primaries.)
But, given that there just aren’t enough troops to up the numbers in Afghanistan beyond 55,000 AND keep Iraq totals at their current level — and that’s with the Army still worn-out, and Obama no closer to “easing its pain” — B.O. is going to have to either force Centcom head David Petraeus to get Iraq theater commander Ray Odierno and Afghanistan theater head David McKiernan to come to consensus, or else craft one.
At the same time, for Petraeus to move the ball too much further down the road, Obama the C-in-C is going to have to start making some policy decisions.
Besides, if he’s serious about talk of how he plans to plans to halve the deficit in four years, what better place to start than by getting ALL troops out of Iraq?
After historian, national security policy analyst and investigative journalist Gareth Porter's February 2 IPS article US-IRAQ: Generals Seek to Reverse Obama Withdrawal Decision, which TomP essayed about here Tuesday, Porter then was interviewed by The Real News about his story that the Pentagon and CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, supported by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Commander of the Multi-National Force-Iraq General Ray Odierno, and retired Generals, have launched the beginnings of a media campaign to undermine President Barack Obama and his stated plans to withdraw all "combat troops" from Iraq within 16 months and his order to Petraeus and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, Gates, and the military leaders to come back quickly with a detailed 16-month plan for doing so.
The base premise of Porter's article and his Real News interview is that The Pentagon and the Generals, presumably backed by the foreign policy establishment, are creating a narrative of 18 months of "success" in Iraq and Obama blowing it and throwing away all the supposed "gains" made beginning with Bush's "surge", to pressure Obama into easing up on plans to withdraw from Iraq, and thus pitting Obama as the deliverer of "change" against the Bush policy of occupation of Iraq and domination of the Middle East in direct opposition to and counterbalancing the "threat" posed by Iran.
Obama the "anti-imperialist" vs hegemony and imperialism, in so many words.
But is this what is really happening, or are we witnessing a smoke and mirrors kabuki in which both sides are playing their roles perfectly? Is the whole play meant to fog the situation and enable Obama, who has said in the past that he will "listen" to his Generals, to appear to have done his best and eventually relent on his campaign promises in the face of "reality" and continue the occupation of Iraq for years to come?
Start with the simplest, most basic fudge. Newspapers and the TV news constantly report on various plans for the "withdrawal of American troops" from Iraq, when what's being proposed is the withdrawal of American "combat troops" or "combat brigades." This isn't a matter of splitting hairs; it's the difference between a plan for full-scale withdrawal and a plan to remain in Iraq in a different military form for the long term. American combat brigades only add up to perhaps half of the troops we presently have in that country.
Pity the poor Democratic candidates for president, caught between Iraq and a hard place. Every day, more and more voters decide that we must end the war and set a date to start withdrawing our troops from Iraq. Most who will vote in the Democratic primaries concluded long ago that we must leave Iraq, and they are unlikely to let anyone who disagrees with them have the party's nomination in 2008.
But what does it mean to "leave Iraq"? Here's where most of the Democratic candidates come smack up against that hard place. There is a longstanding bipartisan consensus in the foreign-policy establishment that the US must control every strategically valuable region of the world -- and none more so than the oil heartlands of the planet. That's been a hard-and-fast rule of the elite for some six decades now. No matter how hard the task may be, they demand that presidents be rock-hard enough to get the job done.
So whatever "leave Iraq" might mean, no candidate of either party likely to enter the White House on January 20, 2009 can think it means letting Iraqis determine their own national policies or fate. ... So the Democratic front-runners must promise voters that they will end the war -- with not too many ideologically laden ifs, ands, or buts -- while they assure the foreign-policy establishment that they will never abandon the drive for hegemony in the Middle East (or anywhere else). In other words, the candidates have to be able to talk out of both sides of their mouths at the same time.
Chernus continued in his article with a neocon delighting quote from Obama that sounds for all the world lifted directly from the PNAC/Bush playbook:
"The single most important job of any president is to protect the American people," he affirmed in a major foreign-policy statement last April. But "the threats we face.... can no longer be contained by borders and boundaries.... The security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people." That's why the U.S. must be the "leader of the free world." It's hard to find much difference on foreign policy between Clinton and Obama, except that Barack is more likely to dress up the imperial march of U.S. interests in such old-fashioned Cold War flourishes.
That delights neoconservative guru Robert Kagan, who summed up Obama's message succinctly: "His critique is not that we've meddled too much but that we haven't meddled enough.... To Obama, everything and everyone everywhere is of strategic concern to the United States." To control everything and everyone, he wants "the strongest, best-equipped military in the world.... A 21st century military to stay on the offense." That, he says, will take at least 92,000 more soldiers and Marines -- precisely the number Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has recommended to President Bush.
New York Times war correspondent Thomas Ricks has several pungent observations related to Iraq for President-elect Obama, focused on the fact that the Status of Forces Agreement probably doesn't mean that much, and that a lot of the easy withdrawing of "combat" troops has been done.
As to the word in scare quotes, and my "Clintonesque" comment in the header, well, I'll let Ricks speak for himself:
News flash for the president-elect: All our troops are combat troops. It isn't like some American soldiers stroll around Iraq unarmed. Nor do the insurgents inquire about the troops' MOS (military occupational specialties) before detonating an IED. Indeed, I feel safer in Iraq accompanying an infantry unit on foot patrol than I do while riding in a convoy of transport soldiers, who are much more likely to get popped by a roadside bomb. So his promise to get "combat troops" out of Iraq in the next 16 months is a phrase that means much less than it appears to.
Total agreement here on all of Ricks' main points. But, I knew that long ago; hat's another reason I had Green, not Democratic, on my presidential vote. Anyway, read the full post for why Ricks thinks a two-term Obama still might not be all the way out of Iraq.
Of course we did, and even if Obama isn’t old enough to remember that personally, he knows better. Ted Rall joins me in exposing Obama’s hypocrisy in “relabeling” troops who he intends to keep in Iraq long past the middle of 2009, and probably long past the end of 2011 if he can get away with it.
Rall also notes Obama NEVER voted against a supplemental funding bill.
The New York Times finally gets up to speed about how Obama actually WON’T be ending the war in Iraq any time soon. No lie, just another bending of the spirit of what he said oh so long ago.
For we true progressives, left-liberals, etc., whether affiliated with a third party or not, this was evident, what, eight months ago or so, from the first time Obama started talking about “combat troops” and ONLY “combat troops” being removed from Iraq.
Now comes the other shoe many of us rhetorically asked about at that time – what is the definition of a “combat solider”?
B.O.’s definition? It’s as narrow as possible. As the Gray Lady makes clear, don’t expect a lot of soldiers to be withdrawn.
The long answers open up some complicated, sleight-of-hand responses to military and political problems facing President-elect Barack Obama.
To try to meet (December 2011 Status of Forces Agreement) deadlines without risking Iraq’s fragile and relative stability, military planners say they will reassign some combat troops to training and support of the Iraqis, even though the troops would still be armed and go on combat patrols with their Iraqi counterparts. So although their role would be redefined, the dangers would not.
Just.Another.Politician.™ sitting pretty in bed with a bunch of punked Obamiac Kool-Aid drinkers.
Meanwhile, it wouldn’t surprise me to see some MSLBs and knee-jerk commenters there to whine that the mainstream media is picking on them. Others will try to ignore this, I have no doubt. From what I’ve so far, that’s the case.
And, we finally, and tragically, put “paid” to the myth that politics had nothing to do with Obama’s 2002 speech in Chicago.
Was that speech all politics? Of course not. Was it even driven by politics as the single largest factor? I don’t think so.
But, was a political angle clear and present? You bet your ass it was.
Unfortunately, our own BushCo government won’t tell us WHAT changes it has accepted in its status of forces agreement with Iraq.
It WILL tell us, though, that it’s through negotiating changes on the SOFA:
A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said “there may be requests for clarifications (from the Iraqis) but as far as we're concerned that process of negotiating has come to an end.”
Don’t worry, though; Arab-language Asharq Al-Awsat fills in what BushCo won’t tell us.
Among other things, BushCo reportedly dropped a clause authorizing Washington and Baghdad to seek an extension for retaining troops in the cities beyond 2009 and in the country beyond 2011.
Hayden has crystal-clear analysis of the real Barack Obama position on Iraq, viewpoints that many liberal Democratic Party bloggers, may not like to discuss.
More ambiguous than audacious.
Check.
“(That) pledge also has been laced with loopholes all along, caveats that the mainstream media and his opponents (excepting Bill Richardson) have ignored or avoided until now.
Indeed.
Then he adopted the safe, nonpartisan formula of the Baker-Hamilton Study Group, which advocated the withdrawal of combat troops while leaving thousands of American counter-terrorism units, advisers and trainers behind.
And, as for Obama’s “refining,” Hayden calls him out on that right away.
“I intend to end this war.”
Beyond that, Hayden notes that the whole thrust of Obama’s speech is to buck final responsibility to the military. If Petraeus says, “too dangerous to bring them home,” well, who is Civilian Obama to overrule that?
Read the whole column; Hayden is spot on. Hayden concludes with four talking point “demands” for Obama to show his progressive peace talker bona fides.
for a hamburger today, says Chimpy McStupidFuckwit to NATO regarding troop commitments in Afghanistan.
That is, the Guardian is reporting that the Idiot-in-Chief is promising to send additional troops to Afghanistan after he is out of office. Has anyone told him yet that he can only be deciderering if he's actually got the job title of deciderer? Snippet:
George Bush today promised to send more troops to Afghanistan after his departure from the White House next year, whatever the status of troop withdrawals from Iraq.
The pledge, delivered at a Nato summit in Bucharest, would add a "significant" number of troops in Afghanistan in 2009, the Pentagon chief, Robert Gates, told reporters.
Now, Gates can be excused for saying what he's saying. After all, his job is to try and make his idiot boss look like a reasonable facsimile of a sentient creature. But Stupie von AWOL? Deities alone know what &mdash make that if &mdash he's thinking.
Doesn't he have handlers who tell him what to say and watch out that he doesn't fuck up too badly? This is pathetic, we're letting him run loose around the world embarrassing and humiliating the whole fucking nation, fer crisake.
Yes, yes, we realize that he has to perform some ungodly contortions in order to get NATO members to commit to additional troops for Afghanistan. But he wouldn't have to contort so mockably if he'd watched his fucking attitude eight years ago and behaved like a dignified and rational human being. Oh, right. He's not, actually.
In case you were wondering: Sarko has agreed to send between 800 and 1,000 French troops, apparently because Canada is otherwise threatening to pull out its troops. Australia, meanwhile, is planning to pull its troops out of Iraq this year.
It describes them as (my quotes where used): • The “get out now, get all the way out, no preconditions” group, that includes me. • The “leave after Iraq is secure” group. • The “I want out but we’re stuck in an Iraq quagmire” set. • The “I want us out but have tuned out” opposition.
The paper says the first two groups each make up 1 in 5 Americans and the last two each claim 1 in 10 people.
I think “fractured” puts it too strongly. I think Group A people like me have to do a better sales job with Group C that we can get out and with Group D to not tune out so much. (That said, I think I have half a foot in that camp at times myself). All this has to be done while outshouting, if necessary, Group B, especially to the degree Group B folks may have half a foot, or more, in the pro-war camp.
First, as noted at A Fistful of Euros, Rauch’s political calculations lead him to simply not mention the additional U.S. and Iraqi casualties from a delayed withdrawal. (If writing forty years ago, Rauch probably would have saluted Nixon’s “Peace with honor” and exercised the same blindsight.)
Second, he writes jewels like this:
[G]rown-up Republicans would recognize that withdrawal is inevitable; they would want to be relevant; they would feel battered by the election results.
Really? There are grown-up Republicans in Congress? We haven’t seen any since the change of party power in the start of 2007. We haven’t seen any that felt “battered” by the midterm election, even in the face of pending further electoral losses at the end of this year.
Third is the delusion that most Republicans recognized withdrawal is inevitable.
“My instinct is that most caucus-goers think any of us will end the war.”
Just plain wrong. You’re one of the three Democratic “front-runners” who do NOT have a plan, desire, goal, or intention of getting us OUT and not halfway out of Iraq. No exceptions, no stipulations, nothing short of getting us out qualifies as getting us out.
That’s our Democratic Congress! Is this the best it can do?
The Democrats; flagship proposal on Iraq is aimed at bringing most troops home. Yet if enacted, the law would still allow for tens of thousands of U.S. troops to stay deployed for years to come. … For those who want troops out, “you’ve got more holes in here than Swiss cheese,” said Tom Andrews, national director of the war protest group Win Without War and a former congressman from Maine.
Loophole No. 1, of course, is this:
The proposal also sets a goal of ending combat by Dec. 15, 2008.
After that, troops remaining in Iraq would be restricted to three missions: counterterrorism, training Iraqi security forces and protecting U.S. assets, including diplomats.
With all three exceptions, you have the “hot pursuit” issue, and what if it escalates? In the last month or so before the Battle of the Bulge, when more and more of limited U.S. supplies were shifted north to the U.S. First Army, or even to the British 21st Army Group, Gen. Patton would find ways of deliberately expanding extended reconnoiterings and limited counteroffenses into actual battles.
Proof positive that’s what could happen in Iraq?
Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, deputy chief of staff for operations in Iraq, declined to estimate how many troops might be needed under the Democrats' plan but said it would be hard to accomplish any of those missions without a significant force.
“It’s a combination of all of our resources and capabilities to be able to execute these missions the way that we are,” Barbero said in a recent phone interview from Baghdad.
For example, Barbero said that “several thousand” troops are assigned to specialized anti-terrorism units focused on capturing high profile terrorist targets. But they often rely on the logistics, security and intelligence provided by conventional troops, he said.
“When a brigade is operating in a village, meeting with locals, asking questions, collecting human intelligence on these very same (terrorist) organizations, that intelligence comes back and is merged and fed into this counterterrorism unit,” Barbero said. “So are they doing counterterrorism operations?
“It’s all linked and simultaneous,” he added. “You can’t separate it cleanly like that.”
On the training issue, what if Iraqi soldiers and security units prove as unwilling to take to training over the next 2-3 years as they have the last 2-3? Are Congressional Democrats, PLUS, the next president, should he or she be a Democrat, going to just pound more sand down that rathole?
Oh, and don’t expect attitudes to greatly change after Jan. 20, 2009. Too many Democrats are invested in the Bipartisan Foreign Policy Consensus™.
McCain’s latest claim as to why we must stay in Iraq is that U.S. honor would suffer if we pull out now.
Really?
When was the last time we heard talk of “peace with honor”?
Wasn’t it from, oh, 1969-1973, as mouthed by Tricky Dick and Henry K?
Didn’t “peace with honor” get us the same peace terms as North Vietnam was seeking in 1968?
In other words, he spent an extra five years in captivity, ignoring his rejecting an out-of-sequence repatriation, for the sake of honor that got us no better peace terms than five years earlier.
...this should resolve the question once and for all: We are on our own. ... Asked about her "greatest mistake," Pelosi said Why don't you tell me? 'Cause I think we're doing just great." Remember when Georgie stumbled over a similar question and couldn't recall any mistakes? It seems Our Only President is not the only one so afflicted.
The hand-off...
It has been pointed out to me many times that the Iraq Occupation and the FISA amendment are only two issues of many, on most of which the Democrats are incrementally better than Republicans, and this has been used as an argument against the conclusion that there is no difference between them.
They are incrementally better. Is that a reason to give them a pass for being complicit in the mass death caused by the Iraq Occupation and in the bankrupting of America? Or a reason to give them a pass for hacking away at freedom and privacy?
Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Leadership are confidant that they will win the presidency and the Congress next year simply on the strength of peoples fear of Republicans.
Sadly, if that happens "rethugs" will be back in power for another four or eight years, dressed up as and self-labelled as "democrats". And the shell games will continue.
And it all can be turned around - if enough people quit whining about how powerless they feel, and remember that they have the power.
If every time a Democratic candidate met with constituents or knocked on peoples doors or phoned them looking for money or votes they heard...
"If you Democrats defund and end the occupation of Iraq before November 2008 I'll contribute to you and vote for you.
Don't waste my time with excuses. Come back or call back when you're done and you'll get my money and my vote. Have a nice day."
... the Democratic Leadership would quickly sit up and listen.
And the Iraq occupation would be history. Along with the FISA amendment. And along with all the bullsh*t of the past seven years.
If enough people quit whining about how powerless they feel, and remember that they have the power...
and use it.
If they believe they will have the votes without doing what they were elected to do, and instead keep enabling Bush, then they have no reason to change and there is no effective difference between them and the rethugs.
I will not, two years down the road, be defending myself for supporting people who enabled Bush when they had the power to stop him.
I also will not wait for millions or tens of millions of other people to use the threat of support withdrawal to pressure them before I will do so.
Waiting for that to happen would mean someone else would have to go first, and would mean that I do not have the courage of my own convictions but would stand with my finger in the wind...
Someone has to go first. If it's me then so be it. I've stood alone most of my life.
There are two taglines on my blog. One from Hunter Thompson: "The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over."
And one from me: "The opposite of conventional wisdom is the likely truth of most things."
"If you Democrats defund and end the occupation of Iraq before November 2008 I'll contribute to you and vote for you.
Don't waste my time with excuses. Come back or call back when you're done and you'll get my money and my vote. Have a nice day."
Twelve former Army captains spell out Iraqi corruption, the paucity of boots on the ground (including in the “surge”) and more.
Their final thought? One that no Republican has entertained or will entertain for a moment, and that has also escaped acceptance from the three “top-tier” Democrats:
There is one way we might be able to succeed in Iraq. To continue an operation of this intensity and duration, we would have to abandon our volunteer military for compulsory service. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq immediately. A scaled withdrawal will not prevent a civil war, and it will spend more blood and treasure on a losing proposition.
If “war-lite” Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or John Edwards get the nomination, you know what to do with your conscience.
Washington - President Bush has no better friends than the spineless Democratic congressional leadership and the party's leading presidential candidates when it comes to his failing Iraq policy.
Those Democrats seem to have forgotten that the American people want U.S. troops out of Iraq, especially since Bush still cannot give a credible reason for attacking Iraq after nearly five years of war.
Last week at a debate in Hanover, N.H., the leading Democratic presidential candidates sang from the same songbook: Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York, and Barack Obama of Illinois and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards refused to promise to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by 2013, at the end of the first term of their hypothetical presidencies. Can you believe it?
When the question was put to Clinton, she reverted to her usual cautious equivocation, saying: "It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting."
Obama dodged, too: "I think it would be irresponsible" to say what he would do as president.
Edwards, on whom hopes were riding to show some independence, replied to the question: "I cannot make that commitment."
They have left the voters little choice with those answers.
Some supporters were outraged at the obfuscation by the Democratic front-runners.
On the other hand, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., are more definitive in their calls for quick troop withdrawals.
But Biden wants to break up Iraq into three provinces along religious and ethnic lines. In other words, Balkanize Iraq.
To have major Democratic backing to stay the course in Iraq added up to good news for Bush.
Now comes a surprising Clinton fan. President Bush told Bill Sammon - Washington Examiner correspondent and author of a new book titled "The Evangelical President" - that Clinton will beat Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination because she is a "formidable candidate" and better known.
Sammon says Bush revealed that he has been sending messages to Clinton to urge her to "maintain some political wiggle room in your campaign rhetoric about Iraq."
The author said Bush contends that whoever inherits the White House will be faced with a potential vacuum in Iraq and "will begin to understand the need to continue to support the young democracy."
Bush ought to know about campaign rhetoric. Remember how he ridiculed "nation building" in the 2000 presidential campaign? Now he claims he is trying to spread democracy throughout the Middle East.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is another Democratic leader who has empowered Bush's war.
Pelosi removed a provision from the most recent war-funding bill that would have required Bush to seek the permission of Congress before launching any attack on Iran. Her spokesman gave the lame excuse that she didn't like the wording of the provision. More likely, she bowed to political pressure.
Is it any wonder the Democrats are faring lower than the president in a Washington Post ABC approval poll? Bush came in at 33 percent and Congress at 29 percent.
Members of Congress seem to have forgotten their constitutional prerogative to declare war; World War II was the last time Congress formally declared war.
Presidents have found other ways to make end runs around the law, mainly by obtaining congressional authorization "to do whatever is necessary" in a crisis involving use of the military. That's the way we got into the Vietnam and Iraq wars.
So what are the leading Democratic White House hopefuls offering? It seems nothing but more war. So where do the voters go who are sick of the Iraqi debacle?
New Mexico governor and presidential hopefull Bill Richardson blogging at The Huffington Post today:
Come January, Americans are going to have to start making a very important choice: do we want to end this war or keep it going? Do we want a President who will end this war or not?
At the DNC Dartmouth debate on Wednesday night, Clinton, Obama, and Edwards all refused to commit to getting our all of our troops out of Iraq by 2013.
...Congress can end this war, they have the power to end this war, but so far they aren't getting it done. If they won't do it, our next President has to -- not in 2017, or 2013, but in 2009.
So Hillary, Barack, John, et al, when are YOU going to GET IT?
If you were one of the Americans waiting for Congress, under Democratic control, to show leadership on the war in Iraq, the message from the Senate is clear: "Nevermind." The same goes for those waiting for lawmakers to fix the damage done to civil liberties by six years of President Bush and a rubber-stamp Republican Congress.
The NYT editors have missed the boat in two places, however. They've nailed the problem with the GOP, but make the I think badly mistaken assumption that the Democratic Leadership is not complicit with Bush's goals, with:
The Democrats don't have, or can't summon, the political strength to make sure Congress does what it is supposed to do: debate profound issues like these and take a stand. The Republicans are simply not interested in a serious discussion and certainly not a vote on anything beyond Mr. Bush's increasingly narrow agenda.
And they do it again in my opinion, with:
Democrats and Republicans who oppose the war have a duty to outline alternatives. Those who call for staying in Iraq have a duty to explain what victory means and how they plan to achieve it. Both sides are shirking an obligation to deal with issues that must be resolved right now, like the crisis involving asylum for Iraqis who helped the American occupation.
They're right that both parties need to be articulating clear alternatives, but they're still stuck in the quicksand of assuming that Iraqis are incompetent children incapable of finding their own path and managing their own affairs to their own satisfaction in their own ways, regardless of what the rest of the world, or the "Washington Consensus", wants Iraqis to do. If Iraqis want help they'll ask for it. It cannot be forced on them, and any attempt to force "help" on them has, is, and will continue to backfire.
If Iraqis have sectarian differences and kill each other in a civil war, it is their civil war, and neither The U.S. nor any other country has any more right to intervene for U.S. benefit than any other more powerful country had the right to intervene in the American Civil War for their benefit.
All that Washington's "help" has ever done for Iraq is make the situation worse. Continually. Never better. Only worse.
Since Bush started a fire that is burning the Iraqi house down the first thing to do is stop throwing fuel into the fire. And since Bush's invasion destroyed the infrastructure of the house before he started the fire and he made no effort to rebuild it, once we stop throwing fuel in and get out of the way before we are thrown out of the way, someone else will rebuild it.
It probably won't look anything like what the "Washington Consensus" would like it to look like when they're done, but too bad.
The vast majority of Iraqis DO NOT want U.S. troops occupying their country.
It is time to recognize that reality, and face up to it.
What will help to begin fixing Iraq is not "doing" something.
What will help to begin fixing Iraq is "not doing" something.
Not funding the occupation any longer and complete and total withdrawal of all U.S. military from the country is what will begin fixing Iraq.
Iraq will be fixed. Eventually. But it will not be republicans or democrats, or even the U.S. that fixes it. It will be, and can only be, Iraqis that fix Iraq.
The U.S. presence in Iraq, and the refusal to leave, is the problem.
